2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (11 page)

Sarah felt the temptation to use the pendant to power up another, smaller, parchment, one of many secured in her Deep Reach jacket. She knew, though, that doing so on her own would mean the device would use up her energy reserves as the pendant was in actuality not a power source at all, but rather a conduit to power Anakim technology using the wearer’s own bioelectricity. Of course this meant that the device was limited by its owner’s physical capacity, which by definition was finite. It also meant that some Anakim technology could not be powered by humans, or at least not a single human anyway, unless they weighed north of four hundred and fifty pounds.

To activate an ancient device the pendant needed to be touching a person’s skin, and then usually a hand, finger or bare foot would be placed on a circular indent of a size the Anakim had deemed appropriate for the object in question. With Homo gigantis weighing in at least three times that of an average human, their power reserves and thus potential were much greater; however, if the pendant’s operator had contact with other people, skin on skin – a hand on a bare arm, for instance – then the capacity of the power source increased. This allowed Anakim devices to be activated with less drain on the pendant’s host, or alternatively it enabled smaller operators to manage larger devices.

Sarah gave a wry smile in the dark, never believing she’d be thinking such thoughts. Even in her wildest dreams she couldn’t have imagined what they’d discovered. She would have been happy with part of a skeleton, a single parchment or artefact. To have been witness to the wonders of Sanctuary blew her mind. If it hadn’t been for the extreme dangers that went with that knowledge, she would’ve had to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming.

One thing was for certain though, without the pendant Sarah could never have activated the transportation device that had sent her, Trish and Jason down into the depths of the Earth. It was, without doubt, unique. She still wondered why the smaller pendant didn’t work in a similar fashion. Jason had suggested it was broken, or just a fashion item, symbolic in nature, perhaps to be used as part of a ritual or ceremony. Whatever the reason, it had become obsolete in terms of comparative usefulness. It was still an Anakim artefact, though, and thus an object to be cherished.

With a last look, she tucked the pendants away, their hidden forms resting back against the skin of her chest. Patting them three times in OCD-like reassurance, Sarah then gave the orb one last stroke before returning it to her coveralls. Settling down, the sound of Jason’s snoring a monotonous choral backdrop, Sarah drifted into slumber.

♦

A spark of light tempted her forward, coaxing her into its warm, protective grasp. It commanded and Sarah obeyed. With a touch of her hand the heat increased.
Why do you fear me?
A voice echoed in her mind.
Am I not what you desire?
A dagger of pain sliced into her head and Sarah screamed. Recognition bloomed and she ran, desperate for escape. Through a tunnel and down she fell. No bottom, no up. Her mind spun and her terror rose. Fleeing into delirium, she fought for release. Darkness compressed her, pulling her back, back from the light, back from freedom. Held by hands unseen, Sarah struggled. Her skin tore, blood trickled and bones broke. She couldn’t escape. The heat grew stronger and the spark of fire enveloped her mind. Choking black smoke gushed into her nose and throat, filling her lungs, the taste of ash and death burning her tongue. Her mother’s scream echoed her own as the house collapsed in an inferno. Hair afire, skin melting and peeling back, Sarah watched her mother burn. Sobbing in torment she screamed again, the torture of her soul complete.

Sarah jerked awake, the remnants of her pitiful squeals of fear echoing in her ears. Drenched in sweat, eyes darting every which way, she breathed deep, the intensity of the dream causing her lucid mind to mirror the horror of the fallacy it had created. And yet the false imagery was based on the reality of her life and a vivid reminder of her underlying guilt.

She swore and wiped the salty perspiration from her face. A noise in the distance made her swing round. Jason remained where he was, but Trish was nowhere to be seen. Getting to her feet and slipping on her Deep Reach helmet, she powered up her visor. The OLED display sent a glow of light across her face as the spectral enhanced image turned an endless subterranean night to a clear scene of detailed grey.

Sarah knew the folly of going anywhere in a dangerous environment alone and without another’s knowledge, and so she bent down and shook Jason awake.

Uttering a grunt of protest he rolled over, his state of sleep reasserted.

Another noise made Sarah pause. Ears straining and with anxiety still fresh from her recurring nightmare, she stood stock still, waiting, listening.

Nothing could be heard.

‘Jason, wake up!’ Sarah dug her boot into his ribs.

‘What?’ He opened his bleary eyes.

‘Trish has gone. Get up, we need to find her.’

‘Gone?’ He sat up and switched on his own helmet. ‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know.’ She walked away and turned on the Centipede, its motor whirring into life. Turning back round she let out a yelp. Trish stood a few feet away, looking at her.

‘Fuck! Where have you been?’

Trish frowned. ‘I heard a noise and went to take a look.’

‘How many times have I told you not to go anywhere alone?’

‘That’s rich coming from you, a person who dives into danger quicker than you can say dead.’

‘I’ve had extensive training, Deep Reach, SED training, you haven’t.’

‘Well, I’m back and I’m safe, no training necessary.’ Trish walked past her and opened an enclosure on the supply vehicle. Removing a flask, she took a swig of water while at the same time avoiding Sarah’s glare.

‘Look, can we just stop?’ Sarah said.

‘Stop what?’

‘This.’

Trish made a face of indifference.

‘This place screws with your mind,’ Sarah said, ‘it’s tearing us apart. You’ve been caving before; you know what its like.’

‘It was a grade two, for one day, so no, I don’t know what it’s like.’

‘Dehydration, paranoia, disorientation,’ Sarah said. ‘If it wasn’t for these helmets and the Centipede—’

‘Bob,’ Jason mumbled.

‘—we’d be hallucinating, sleeping for twelve hours straight and God knows what else.’ Sarah looked to Jason, who’d also decided to take on some water.

‘She’s right,’ he said, ‘these places can really mess you up. It’s the lack of light and fresh air. The constant silence, too. We’ve been down here over a week. Even I’m feeling it.’

Trish humphed and Sarah took that to be a sign of weakening resolve. ‘Truce?’ She held out a hand.

Trish hesitated and then accepted the offering.

Sarah searched her friend’s face for the hint of a smile, for anything that signalled a warming of relations, but nothing was forthcoming. It was a start, though.

Jason handed a small energy bar to Trish. ‘So, what noise?’

‘Eh?’

‘You said you heard a noise,’ he said. ‘What noise?’

Trish gestured ahead. ‘I’m not sure, something. Sounded weird, like—’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Sarah refrained from commenting in order to preserve the new found peace. ‘Whatever it was we need to get moving again. According to my helmet we’ve stayed for too long, we were asleep for six hours.’

Jason swore and Trish looked shocked. ‘Are you sure? I set my alarm.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Me, too. I must have just switched it off and gone back to sleep. I’ll turn up the loudness; we can’t afford to lose more hours like that again.’

‘So, which way now?’ Jason asked her.

‘There’s only one way; forward. We don’t have the supplies to get back to the shuttle station and even if we did—’

‘When they found us they’d lock us all up and throw away the key,’ Trish said, finishing her sentence.

Jason collected the Centipede’s control unit and slipped on the strap. ‘How far to the next waypoint beacon?’

Sarah removed an energy gel from her backpack, swallowed it down and then consulted the map on her visor. A detailed schematic of the route to the Anakim temple appeared, along with information on the various hazards between them and it. ‘About three quarters of a mile,’ she said.

Jason’s expression brightened. ‘Nice.’

‘Straight down.’

His smile faded.

‘Welcome to Sanctuary,’ Trish said.

Sarah, buoyed by her partial reconciliation with Trish, slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come on, doofus, the sooner we start the sooner we’ll finish.’

‘Doofus?’ he said, peeved.

Trish snorted. ‘Sounds about right to me.’

Sarah walked away with a small smile on her face while her eyes scanned the path ahead with care. Trish followed and, bringing up the rear, came Jason; the all-terrain vehicle, aka Bob, trundling along by his side.

♦

A noise echoed down the cave from behind and Jason slowed the Centipede to a halt. Looking back, he searched the pitch-black by filtering through the different visual spectrums provided by his visor’s operating system. He zoomed in on an area in the distance. Nothing stirred.
Get a grip, Jas
, he told himself,
you’ll be seeing little green men next
. With a shake of the head he switched Bob back into forward motion with a flick of the joystick and followed his friends into the never-ending darkness of Sanctuary.

Chapter Seven

Sarah peered down the enormous rent in the Earth’s crust. She knew the bottom lurked far below but from her vantage point, even when using her visor’s magnification, a visual confirmation of its existence proved elusive. Hanging a hundred feet down from the lip of the small plateau above, Sarah held onto the rock wall as Trish and Jason edged down alongside her, their ropes dangling onto a ledge located a further fifty feet down. To her right, the black and yellow form of the Centipede hung suspended by its winch cable, which had been anchored into the rock face using its custom built automated deploy and retrieval system. Sarah had hoped to have left the Centipede behind at this point in their journey, but since the large aerial drone had met an early end, they’d have to make do with scaling future obstacles as best they could.

Negotiating Sanctuary’s crumbling landscape proved difficult enough, but with the bulky all terrain vehicle along for the ride it slowed their progress to a crawl. With supplies running low, Sarah knew they had to pick up the pace. The time for caution had passed. If they didn’t get to the five transportation devices in the Anakim temple in the next seven days, they might never reach them.

The fact that the devices represented their only chance of getting back to the surface wasn’t lost on Sarah. Nor was the fact that none of the five might lead to where they wanted to go. There was a chance they might not even work at all. But, when they’d devised this plan back in the safety of the USSB, it had seemed more than feasible; they had after all encountered such adversity before and if they ever wanted to see the surface again this had been their only option. Now that reality had sunk in, doubts had grown with each passing day.
Have I made the right decision? Have I led my friends to an early grave? Why did I ever think this could work?
Whenever these thoughts emerged, Sarah suppressed them. She knew she could do this. She had to do this.
Trish and Jason wouldn’t have agreed had they not thought it viable. Would they?
She knew she could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be.
Have I deceived them, have I deceived myself?

NO!
came the angry response.
This is the only way, the way to freedom, the surface, justice for my mother and exposure of the Anakim and Sanctuary. There is no other option, it was this or nothing.
It was all in; the gamble had been made.
Now all I have to do is make sure the dice land in our favour.

Adjusting her harness, mental preoccupation resolved, Sarah continued her descent, the soft clinking of her assorted climbing gear echoed by that coming from her two friends nearby. Reaching the ledge, she disconnected herself and turned her attention to the Centipede. Using its control console, she manoeuvred it onto the same rocky outcrop before Trish and Jason landed alongside moments after.

‘You two okay?’

Jason puffed out his cheeks and nodded.

‘I’m not sure I can keep this up,’ Trish said, rubbing a shoulder.

‘Here.’ Jason turned her round and began massaging her.

‘Ow, not so hard.’

‘If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t work.’

‘Who told you that, the Spanish inquisition?’ She let out a grunt of pain and Jason smirked as he moved to knead her back.

Sarah retrieved the Centipede’s anchor with the touch of a button, the wire rope going slack as the mechanism at its end detached from above. A high-pitched whine indicated the winch span round at speed, the cable retracting faster than gravity’s invisible pull. Repositioning the spider-like device, Sarah initiated its insertion into the rock. A whir of servos forced a spike deep into the substrate while smaller versions repeated the process on either side. Happy, she reversed the Centipede over the lip, each set of its small wheels leaving behind terra firma for another mid-air ballet. With the next leg of the descent underway, the three friends followed their supply vehicle over the edge, abseiling down over the craggy drop.

Five more times they had to redeploy in this fashion and their supply of abseil anchors had shrunk to half. Sarah had taken to climbing down in order to retrieve her friend’s cams and self-piling bolts for re-use. More time they could ill afford wasted.

On the final section, everyone was halfway down when a horrendous noise shook the ground.

‘Earthquake!’ Jason shouted.

Trish screamed and Sarah clung on for dear life as the cliff face shifted.

Rocks rained down upon them, bouncing from helmets and bodies alike. Looking up, Sarah saw a large boulder heading straight for her. She swung to one side. Pain tore through her as it clipped her shoulder. Letting out a shout she fell ten feet before her safety line jerked her to a stop. Spinning in circles, she heard Jason shout, but she only had eyes for the wall which appeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared – BANG! A fist-sized stone bounced from her helmet as the deafening shaking continued. Her rotation slowed and she made a grab for the wall. Slipping a hand inside a deep crack, she pulled herself back in just as another massive boulder whooshed past behind. Pulling herself flat against the relative safety of a tiny overhang, Sarah saw Jason had also managed to secure himself. Trish, however, swung out in dangerous arcs while behind her, appearing out of the gloom, the Centipede tore through the air towards her.